Feds warn of elevated fire danger for Southern California

Photo gallery:Firefighter training in Cedar Glen A new brush fire in the triple-digit Inland Empire heat, along with the smoke and ashes that filled skies from Ventura to Riverside counties earlier this month may have already delivered the message that Southern Californians can expect a serious fire season. Two Cabinet secretaries made the point for themselves on Monday.

"We should not be lulled into a false sense of security over the nature of our coming fire season," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a conference call with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and other officials Monday.

Vilsack and Jewell spoke from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, where federal officials responsible for predicting wildfire activity are warning that California, along with other Western states, face elevated fire risks this summer.

As if to make the cabinet secretaries' point, a new blaze - dubbed the Lytle Fire - ignited Monday afternoon in northern Fontana and prompted authorities to shut down the busy 15/215 freeway interchange while firefighters attacked the flames on the ground and from the air.

The Lytle Fire, which grew quickly to 75 acres, was but the latest sign that California's wildland firefighters will be hard at work this year. The Springs Fire started May 2 near Camarillo and burned more than 24,200 acres before firefighters fully contained it. The Springs Fire and smaller Gorgonio Fire, which burned about 140 miles to the east on a mountainside south of Banning, both signaled that prior warnings of a difficult fire season were more than speculation as they burned during the first weekend of May.

"The evidence of the last couple weeks, right up to today, shows the warnings were prophetic," Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert said.

From coast to coast, there have actually been fewer wildfires at this point in the year than there were in 2013, officials in the conference call said, but the reason the agriculture secretary warned of a "false sense of security" is because the West is much more likely to see elevated fire activity than the East, where fire activity has been somewhat reduced due to higher than usual amounts of precipitation.

The opposite has taken place out West. A dry winter means federal fire officials anticipate elevated fire risks through August, according to the government's most recent fire potential outlook.

How dry has it been? Judging by rainfall totals for downtown Los Angeles, this past spring and winter has been the sixth driest in 135 years, Patzert said.

And unseasonably warm weather, especially within the oft-fire-prone Inland Empire is another factor elevating fire risks. San Bernardino on Monday equaled its record high for the day at 103, while Ontario hit 102. The high in Woodlands Hills on Monday was 100, and it had come down only a few notches to 97 by 5 p.m., according to AccuWeather. And closer to the coast, the high topped 90 in Torrance. Temperatures are expected to cool down over the next few days.

"After an extremely dry winter and spring, we're not even getting the 'May gray' and 'June gloom,'" Patzert said, adding that there may still be a chance for the weather to cool off next month.

Any cloudy weather, Patzert emphasized, would be a prime opportunity for people living in the mountains or other fire prone areas to protect their homes by clearing away brush and creating what firefighters call "defensible space. "

Federal agencies in the departments of Agriculture and Interior have more than 13,000 firefighters on staff for fire season, according to officials.

The Forest Service's firefighting forces have been cut from 10,500 to 10,000 personnel, nationwide but representatives of the Angeles and San Bernardino national forests will be at full staffing this year, representatives said.

The Angeles forest will have 350 to 400 firefighters at work this summer, spokesman Nathan Judy said. The forest's assets will also include 28 fire engines and five hotshot crews, whose members use hand tools to cut away brush on the front lines of wildfires. Angeles officials can also call upon another five hotshot crews who train at regional colleges.

The San Bernardino National Forest will have about 400 firefighters on duty for the summer fire season, spokesman John Miller said. The nation's most urbanized national forest's firefighting assets also include 25 fire engines and four hotshot crews.

Berlant said the move paid dividends when it came time to respond to the Springs Fire and other events this month, but he also emphasized that firefighters need the public's help to keep prevent wildfires.

"Over 94 percent of our wildfires are human-caused. This means most wildfires are preventable," Berlant said.